1969 Ford Mustang Boss 429 - Bad In BlackKK1220 is one of the first Boss 429s By Jerry Heasley

To the casual observer, the color is the main attraction of Rick Parker's beautifully restored '69 Boss 429 Mustang. Boss 429s look bad in black. But Rick looks at KK1220 with an educated eye knowing the first production Boss 429, job No. 1, was KK1208.

Black has emerged as the most desirable color for Boss 429 collectors, but this '69 is also one of the first sold to the public. Steve Strange's standard reference book, Boss 429: Performance Mustang Style, states: "The first 50 cars built were priority cars, going to preferential dealers, factory-sponsored racers, or any area where the cars could be given exposure."

None of those preferential dealers were in the little hamlet of Parma Heights, Ohio. Rick grew up in Columbus and had not even heard of this small town. Yet KK1220, one of the first Boss 429s built, went to the dealership in Parma Heights, a small town near Cleveland. Truth is often stranger than fiction.

Rick says it hit him that during the early '80s, the Performance Ford Club of America staged a gigantic show at Ricart Ford in Columbus. "Singer Ford in Columbus was also a gigantic Ford dealer," Rick tells us. "They were Boss 429 crazy. And Dick Mashiter Ford was performance crazy. They actually had a performance club." Cars came from all over the nation. This black fastback must have been the Boss 429 he and so many thousands of others ogled year after year at this big show.

"Nobody looked at KK numbers in 1982," Rick says. "People just passed by the car." In other words, the KK number didn't matter or even mean anything at that point. People didn't know they were looking at one of the most unusual and rarest Boss 429s ever built.

Rick opened Signature Auto Classics (SAC) in 1999 when his hobby started consuming the majority of his time. What better way is there to serve your passion for Cobra Jets, Cougars, 427 Galaxies, Shelbys, Fairlanes, Torinos, and Boss Mustangs? On a recent trip to SAC, we spotted 37 such vehicles. A few belong to customers, but most of them belong to Rick. Meanwhile Rick, Larry Marcum, and Doug Klinger restore the factory Ford musclecars in a smaller section of the shop.

Rick generously dispenses information to restorers and collectors; no doubt because he's a collector too. Helping others can lead to car purchases, as it did with KK1220. Rick and the gang at SAC were guiding a customer through a Boss 429 restoration a few years ago. After about a year and a half of work, the restorer was weary of the job.

"One day he called and said, 'I'm done," Rick told us, "' I'm not going to finish it.' So he towed it all the way to Columbus in an enclosed trailer."

Rick bought the Boss, which was a non-roller still on a rotisserie jig. The engine and four-speed had been rebuilt. The body was in red oxide primer. To the neophyte, the car might have looked like a chip shot to restore. However, Boss 429s fall on the exotic side of Mustang restorations. Obviously, the factory smog equipment is hard to find and therefore expensive. Ditto for other unique parts like the air cleaner and its snorkel, the unique battery and caps, and a host of other parts. But Rick and his crew had the expertise to round up the special parts and bring the Boss 429 back to its original factory glory.

"The fun thing about that car is that when it was done, we drove it!" Rick said laughing.

The Boss 429 may rank up there as one of the hobby's most trailered cars. Rick respects pushing restored gems on and off trailers, but he also respects revving the solid-lifter, hemi-headed big-block engine and shifting the four-speed through the gears. You have to keep the fluids running through the car to keep everything in shape, and Rick's cars are more than show worthy because they are run, as Ford intended.

When we arrived to take pictures, he fired up the black Boss and off we went. He says SAC gets a lot of positive feedback from his friends and customers for driving the exotic Mustang. "So many of these cars are restored, and then the owners are afraid to take them on the road. I wouldn't drive it from here to Florida, but it is fun to take out and drive."

Rick doesn't go to extremes. The car's first major show was the 40th Anniversary Mustang Show in Nashville in April 2004. He trailered his part-time driver to the track there and entered it in the Mustang Club of America concours-trailered class. It received a gold award.

We remember the car sitting under the bleachers. Rick was having a great time fielding questions from a steady stream of onlookers. The black-on-black was obviously a big attraction.

Raven Black was one of five Boss 429 colors for '69, in addition to Royal Maroon; Black Jade, which is a dark green; Candyapple Red; and Wimbledon White. The Grabber colors didn't debut until 1970. Rick likes the black color combination, but he's not sure whether it or Black Jade is more rare.

Today people think about the KK number. According to Strange's book, KK1201 through KK1214 were special use vehicles; Job No. 1 was KK1208, used for engine development. Also, of the first 50 built, "Extra care was taken in building these cars to assure proper fit and finish, for they would be given the closest scrutiny by the press and the public." KK1220 is still getting that close scrutiny today.

Editor's note: Rick Parker sold the black Boss 429 after the photography was done for this article. The subsequent owner sold the car for $308,000 at the Russo and Steel collector-car auction last January.

Mercury El GatoSporting a bold lime green paint job, El Gato (Spanish for “The Cat”) was produced as a styling exercise for a futuristic-looking Cougar. Note the shaved door handles, chopped roof, and ultracool three-spoke 16″ wheels with new-at-the-time Goodyear Polyglass radials. To say this Cat was before its time would be a serious understatement.While the front end merged styling from both the Cougar and the GTO, it still projected an evil stance. Note how the limited flat black striping ends inside the molded-on hood scoop. Also, the front and rear pans were rolled a very advanced looking feature in an era of chrome bumpers. This was the first ever fastback Cougar.At the rear, LTD-style taillamps were broken at the left by the racing-style gas filler cap. The square center-exit exhaust tips lended a very unique air to the car. It is not known if El Gato still exists but it’s presumed to have been destroyed (standard Ford practice for show vehicles at the time).

1963 Ford-Mercury Cougar II The 1963 Cougar was introduced as a show model "from the company which pioneered the personal car." To get in, open the electrically-operated top-hinged doors.

The Cougar II is a candy-apple red fastback design with a fiberglass body and a 260 High-Performance engine and 4 speed transmission. In the 1963 Ford shown the third Cougar dream car, it was called Cougar II. This very handsome two-passenger GT sports car would have made a timely contender to the popular Corvette String Ray. (Ford explained that GT, or gran turismo, is a term usually applied to two-seat coupes designed for super highways.) Cougar II featured a fastback roof, conceaied "pop-up" headlamps, and a serious, fully instrumented interior.

Powertrain was a high-performance 260 cu. in. V-8 engine that connected a four-speed transmission with a console-mounted gearshift lever. It was claimed that Cougar II was engineered to reach speeds in the 170 miles-an-hour range. When interior air pressure exceeded 15 pounds per square inch, a reliefpanel across the rear of the passenger compartment opened automatically.

This panel was required, since there was the possibility that at high speeds, the extreme pressure against the rear window might blow it out. Cougar also had a unique spring-loaded window-lift mechanism that allowed adjustment to the curved side windows.

The Cougar II, the third of the X-Car group, was named after the Cougar I which preceded it by a scant 18 months. It was the most radical of the first three show cars and was not based upon an established Ford platform. Instead, the iridescent candy red car was constructed on AC-Cobra tube frame (Chassis #CSX2004) obtained from the newly-created Carroll Shelby Enterprises in California. However, the chassis set up had to be modified: To clear the hood, the high-performance 289 Ford engine was moved rearward in the chassis. Intended as a response to the powerful and lithe Ferrari, it was the most competition-oriented of the first three X-Cars.

The Cobra II was probably the most beautiful of the three X-Cars, but was the least influential in terms of styling. This fastback coupe was designed before the Corvette Stingray. Built on a Cobra frame, the 289 K-Code powered car and wire wheels set a styling standard that was hard to replicate. The candy-red car still exists today.Source: www.conceptcars.it;www.thelynxproject.org

Somehow, someway, one of the first pre-production Mustangs, 5S08F100009, was pulled from the assembly line in early 1964 and sent to Dearborn Steel Tube, a contracted Ford shop, to be built into a shortened two-seater prototype by designer Vince Gardner. The car was eventually recruited for Ford’s Custom Car Caravan, where it was displayed around the country as the “Mustang III.” Fearing that Ford would crush his creation after its show duty ended, Gardner allegedly stole his unique Mustang and stashed it on the second floor of a rented Michigan warehouse, building a brick wall to hide it. However, the car was soon discovered and recovered by an insurance company, which eventually sold the car in 1969 to Bill Snyder, who had coveted the “Shorty” Mustang ever since reading about it in a 1965 automotive magazine.

The car is still owned by Snyder today. At the behest of Amelia Island Concours’ Bill Warner, Snyder restored the Mustang for Amelia’s “What Were They Thinking?” class at the 2013 show.

When the wall at the back of the rented building came down, a few bricks fell inward. Nobody present—not even the owner of the building—knew what the wall concealed or even why the guy who had rented it put the wall up, they just knew that the wall had to come down. And when the dust cleared, they found that the bricks that toppled inward had landed on the plexiglass rear window of an odd little Mustang that raised a whole lot of questions that haven’t been conclusively answered even today, almost 50 years later, when the Mustang has been slated to go to auction.

What happened after the discovery of the shortened two-seater fiberglass-bodied Mustang in that warehouse in Inkster, Michigan, appears rather straightforward. The warehouse owner, who only tore down the wall after the guy who rented the space about six months prior—Vince Gardner, a veteran car designer who had worked for Cord and Auburn in the 1930s and Studebaker in the 1940s and 1950s—failed to pay all but the first month’s rent, either alerted the authorities or Ford directly. The Mustang, considered stolen after it disappeared from a Detroit-area warehouse in May of 1965, went to Aetna, the insurance company that had previously cut a $10,000-plus check to Dearborn Steel Tubing, the company that turned the car out a year or two prior.

Aetna, based in Hartford, Connecticut, then shipped the Mustang back to its headquarters, where it sat outside for a year or so until one of its executives bought it, titled it, put about 11,000 miles on its tri-power 302, and then placed an ad for it in the December 1968 issue of Hemmings Motor News.

He found a buyer in Bill Snyder, a Cleveland-area print shop owner who had seen the car both in the May 1965 issue of Motor Trend and in person when the Ford Custom Car Caravan made a stop at a Cleveland-area dealership; Snyder inquired about buying one then—”The Motor Trend article made it sound like Ford was going to start producing them,” he said—but was told that it was just an idea car not meant for production.So Snyder jumped at the chance to buy the show car. He repaired the rear window and repainted the Mustang from its cracked candy apple lacquer to black primer, then drove it around Cleveland for another 4,000 miles before socking it away. He kept it in storage for the next few decades, until Bill Warner, chairman of the Amelia Island Concours d’Elegance, learned of the Mustang in 2011 and told Snyder that if he restored it, Warner would feature it in the concours. Snyder did, and Warner did.

But its pre-brick-wall history had some peculiarities, starting with the VIN: 5S08F100009, which indicates a 1965 Mustang convertible powered by the F-code, two-barrel, 260-cu.in. V-8—specifically, the ninth Mustang to come off of the assembly line at Ford’s pilot plant in Allen Park, Michigan, according to early Mustang historian Bob Fria. Fria said that alone makes the car significant, given that his research shows that only 15 pilot Mustangs were built in November or December 1963 (all notchbacks or convertibles), and just three of those 15—including Snyder’s—are known to exist.

Some of those 15 underwent destructive testing, while others went on to be evaluated by race teams and other departments within Ford Motor Company. According to Fria, Ford’s records show that three of the 15—the eighth, ninth and 10th—went to Andy Hotton at Dearborn Steel Tubing.

The eighth and 10th were reportedly scrapped, but the ninth went on to become something else. Snyder said he suspects that Ford had Dearborn Steel Tubing finish the Mustang with a scratch-built fiberglass fastback body and a custom-built tri-power 302-cu.in. V-8, specifically for the Ford Custom Car Caravan, with Vince Gardner’s help.

According to Snyder’s account of the car’s history, the Dearborn Steel Tubing-built fastback toured the country as the Mustang III, and once the Mustang finished its six-month tour on the caravan, Snyder said that Gardner learned that Ford planned to scrap the shortened Mustang and thus stole it to prevent its destruction, secreting it away in the Inkster warehouse.

“I think it was Dearborn Steel Tubing that filed the stolen car report,” Snyder said. “Though I still don’t know how it became (Dearborn Steel Tubing’s) property or why Ford would turn the title of it over to Dearborn Steel Tubing.” Ford later declined to prosecute Gardner, Snyder said, because Gardner was still doing pre-production engineering work for Ford.

However, auto historian Mark Gustavson, who has been researching the Ford Custom Car Caravan for an upcoming book, said Ford didn’t commission the shortened Mustang and that the company’s only direct involvement with the car came when Ford leased it from Gardner for the third edition of the Ford Custom Car Caravan.

“Gardner was an accomplished designer and needed no prompting from the Ford design studios,” Gustavson said. “There is no extant research that demonstrates that Gardner built the car to FoMoCo styling directives. It is not evidence that Ford owned the shorty Mustang because this car appeared in Ford Custom Car Caravan displays. Many independently-owned cars were leased by Ford for display in the Ford Caravan.”

Gustavson points to the DiDia 150, the so-called Bobby Darrin dream car; the Bill Cushenberry Silhouette; the Mustang Pegasus; and a number of vehicles built by George Barris, as examples of cars that independent customizers built and that Ford spotted and leased for the Custom Car Caravan.

He said he believes that Ford probably only became aware of the shortened Mustang once Gardner had already built it and entered it in a car show at Cobo Hall in Detroit. At the time, Gardner worked either directly for or as a freelancer for Hotton and would thus have had access to pre-production cars through Dearborn Steel Tubing. (Indeed, in his book Mustang Genesis, The Creation of the Pony Car, Fria notes that in 1963 Ford sent a Falcon chassis to Dearborn Steel Tubing for Gardner to convert into what would become the Mustang II show car.)

Whatever Gardner’s motivations for bricking the Mustang up in a warehouse and then not paying rent on the space, Gustavson didn’t say, but the answer perhaps lies in a profile on the designer that Michael Lamm wrote for the October 2007 issue of Collectible Automobile, in which he noted that Gardner battled mental health issues throughout his life.

A loner and a misfit, Gardner worked feverishly on projects and gained the trust of his mentor Gordon Buehrig, but also seemed to have trouble working with others, holding down jobs, maintaining relationships, or even staying in one place for too long. His troubles led him to spend part of the early 1940s in a mental institution and drove him to attempt suicide at least twice before killing himself in 1976.

“The history of the car is a lot more nuanced and complicated than the simple claim that Gardner just stole the car and hid it away,” Gustavson said.

Gustavson also calls into question that the Mustang III moniker was applied to the shortened Mustang. While a car on the Ford Custom Car Caravan did appear to go by the Mustang III name, Gustavson said it was applied to a Barris-built car. Though, as Gustavson noted, “these sorts of car name oddities occurred regularly.” This runs counter to the Motor Trend article, which identified the car as the Mustang III.

Snyder, who displayed the car under a Mustang III banner this summer alongside the Mustang I and Mustang II concept and show cars, said that he’s “not certain that (the Mustang III name) is a very important part of its history,” but maintains that Ford commissioned the Mustang. “Vince Gardner couldn’t have bought it because the VIN is a pre-production number,” Snyder said. “It had to have been Ford that did this car. I have the correspondence back and forth between Dearborn Steel Tubing, Ford, and the Inkster Police Department.”

Regardless of its history, the Mustang nowadays sports a full restoration back to its original candy-apple red paint and black interior. The 302 engine and automatic transmission remain original to the car, Snyder said, and though he describes it as a great driver, he doesn’t take it out much because of its uniqueness. “We like to drive our cars, we don’t like to just have them sitting around, which is one reason we’re selling it,” he said.

The Mustang, which will cross the block at the Auctions America event in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, has been estimated to sell for between $400,000 and $600,000.

1967 Shelby GT500 Super SnakeFrom MecumWhen Ford redesigned the Mustang in 1967 to take the 390/320 HP big block V-8, Carroll Shelby took the next logical step and introduced the GT500, the first big block Shelby GT, powered by a modified Police Interceptor 428 CI engine rated at 355 HP. Buyers took to the new car immediately, and the car outsold its small block GT350 stable-mate 2,048 to 1,175 units. In addition to his partnership with Ford, Shelby was also the West Coast distributor for Goodyear, who in February asked Shelby to take part in a promotional event for its new Thunderbolt line of economy tires. Shelby judged that the GT500 would be the perfect choice for an extended high-speed demonstration of the new tire, but the decision took a twist when former Shelby American sales manager Don McCain approached Shelby with the idea of building a supercar that would outperform anything else in the world. Then employed by Dana Chevrolet in South Gate, California and Mel Burns Ford in Long Beach, McCain suggested that Carroll put a racing 427 in the GT500 for the test, let him sell the car and then build 50 more for Burns.

Ever one to leap at opportunity, Shelby instructed Fred Goodell, Shelby American’s chief engineer on loan from Ford, to prepare a GT500 with a special engine for the test, which would be held at Goodyear’s high speed test facility near San Angelo, Texas. Goodell selected GT500 number 544 for the task: “We rebuilt it with a special lightweight 427 racing engine; special rear axle, special transmission and, of course, Thunderbolt tires.” Don McCain later described the engine as “the mother of all 427s at that time…aluminum heads, aluminum water pump, forged crank, Le Mans rods, just basically everything inside the engine was built to run sustained 6,000 RPM – to race at Le Mans.” Essentially, it was the same powerplant used in the GT40 Mk II that had won the famous French endurance race the previous year, including a variation on the Mk II’s “bundle of snakes” exhaust system and its output of 600 horsepower. Goodell made other modifications to prepare the car for the tire test. An external oil cooler, braided lines and a remote oil filter were installed to increase the 427’s reliability; stiffer springs and shocks were mounted on the passenger side of the GT500 to counteract the high-speed cornering forces it would encounter on Goodyear’s 5-mile oval track. Goodell completed the car with one-off chrome inboard headlight surrounds and a unique version of the production Le Mans striping, with two narrow Blue stripes flanking a wide Blue center stripe, elements that distinguish it from all other GT500s.

Upon its arrival in Texas the last week of March, the Super Snake was fitted with Shelby 10-spoke aluminum wheels mounted with 7.75-15 Thunderbolt Whitewall tires, which were overinflated with nitrogen to keep the sidewalls rigid and prevent overheating. Before the test commenced, Shelby took a number of invited journalists, including the editors of Time and Life magazines, for demonstration laps around the track. Over the years there were conflicting claims as to who actually drove the car on its 500-mile test, but the story was set straight by Goodell during an interview for an episode of Speed Channel’s "My Classic Car." After the demonstration runs, during which Shelby reached a top speed of 170 MPH, Goodell recounted, “[Shelby] came back and he handed me his helmet and he says, ‘I’ve got to go to Washington, so you go ahead and drive the test. And so I got back in the car and I drove the car in the 500 mile test. We drove at 142 MPH average for 500 miles.” The test was a complete success: the skinniest tires ever mounted on a Shelby GT, the Thunderbolts had performed flawlessly, retaining 97 percent of their original tread.

The Super Snake was then shipped back to Mel Burns Ford in California, where it remained on display while Don McCain worked to generate interest for a limited run of 50 427-powered GT500s. At over twice the price of a baseline GT500, the Super Snake was priced well beyond its competition, including Shelby’s own 427 Cobra. McCain was forced to admit the car was “just too expensive;" it was ultimately shipped to Dallas where it was purchased by Braniff International Airways pilots James Hadden and James Gorman, who then replaced its original 2.73 gearset with a 4.10 unit for drag racing. Two subsequent owners remain unidentified today, but records show that the car was purchased in 1970 by Bobby Pierce of Benbrock, Texas, who cared for it for 25 years before selling it to David Loebenberg of Florida.

The Super Snake returned to California seven years later when it was bought by Charles Lillard, who later sold it to Richard Ellis, a collector of rare Mustangs in Illinois, at which point the car registered 26,000 miles on the odometer and showed almost no deterioration.

Ellis proceeded with what he describes as a “light restoration," locating the correct wires and hoses for the engine compartment, a period-correct Rotunda fire extinguisher, NOS Shelby 10-spoke wheels and, amazingly, four brand-new Thunderbolt whitewall tires in the proper size. As Ellis explained in a September, 2011 interview with Auto Enthusiast Magazine, “I wanted to own this piece of Shelby history worse than anything. It was well cared for by its previous owners, but I’ve put a lot of effort into returning it to the state it was in on the day of the tire test.”

“The Thunderbolts were made for … well, boring family cars in the ’60s, which is why nobody reproduces them or has even heard of them for 35 years. I found what has to be the only surviving set in a warehouse in Akron, Ohio. I’m sure Shelby pulled the original Thunderbolts and threw them away when the car got back to California.

“Now, when you see a picture of the Super Snake and it’s got skinny whitewall tires, you’ll know it is either from the Goodyear test or from the time it’s spent in my collection.”

Built with the heart of a Le Mans champion yet ultimately destined for but one day in the sun, there is only one Super Snake, the result of a confluence of forces that could only have happened in the charmed life of one Carroll Shelby.

HIGHLIGHTS

- The one and only 1967 Shelby GT500 Super Snake - GT40 Mk II 427 engine, built specifically for this car - Purpose-built for the Goodyear Thunderbolt tire test - Original Shelby invoice, MSO and Goodyear tire test photos - One-off chrome inboard headlight surrounds - Unique Le Mans Blue hood striping to distinguish the car - Fitted with passenger car, 7.75x15" Goodyear Thunderbolt whitewall tires - The Super Snake drove 500 miles at an average of 142 MPH and retained 97% of the original tire tread - The Super Snake was never mass produced because the projected retail price would be over twice the price of a baseline GT500 and more than a 427 Cobra - This prototype was sold in August 1967 for $5,000 - Featured in many magazines and My Classic Car

Joe,That car ran in sixteen TransAm races. Its best finish was third place.John McComb became a Shelby team driver as of Riverside, Las Vegas, and Kent in 1967 and 1968. The last TransAm race of the 1967 season was at Kent, Washington, where Jerry Titus drove this car after crashing his team car. This is the only remaining 1967 Shelby Trans Am team car left from the 1967 championship car, championship team, championship driver season.

another unusual local Ford musclecar, this car has been around the local car scene since the seventies, pretty much the way you see it here. 428cj Galaxie XL. This car has practically everything under the hood chromed, it was done back before the restored musclecar craze took off.

In the years after WWII, before the advent of the Nader safety nannies and government watchdogs, adventurous entrepreneurs served up an endless parade of fun and dangerous products, one of the most outlandish of which was the Rocket Drag Axle built by the Turbonique Company of Orlando, Florida. Powered by an extremely efficient solid fuel known as Thermolene, the device connected mechanically to a car’s rear differential and, when ignited, delivered upwards of a thousand horsepower to the driveline, producing truly mind-numbing acceleration.

The Rocket Drag Axle’s potential was well demonstrated by the infamous ‘’Black Widow’’ Volkswagen Beetle. A basically stock Bug fitted with an early production unit, the Black Widow became a drag racing legend on September 19, 1966, at Tampa Dragway when it left Tommy Ivo’s four-engine Showboat dragster in its dust with a 9.36 elapsed time at an astonishing 168 mph.

Such wild exploits could not help but draw the attention of Zachary Taylor Reynolds of R.J. Reynolds Tobacco fame. Playboy, pilot, street racer and all-around enfant terrible, the mischievous Reynolds instantly grasped the Rocket Drag Axle’s entertainment potential and conceived of a car that, even beyond its boldly intimidating appearance, would strike fear into unsuspecting onlookers with a prodigious detonation of Rocket Axle power. Reynolds’ creation, a 1964 Ford Galaxie 500 he dubbed the “Tobacco King”, was as wild an example of a Rocket Drag Axle-equipped car as there ever was, and certainly fulfilled the young daredevil’s expectations.

As documented in the 1967 Turbonique product catalog, Reynolds replaced the Raven Black Galaxie’s original 390 V8 engine with a 425 horsepower 427 Ford big block fitted with a rare Latham axial flow supercharger and four Carter one-barrel sidedraft carburetors. That alone would have satisfied almost every hot-rodder ever born, but for young Zach it was just the entrée; the main course was the 850 horsepower Rocket Drag Axle fitted to the Galaxie’s differential. Although large and well-built to begin with, the car had to be modified to compensate for the colossal acceleration and speeds of which it was then capable. The frame and suspension were reinforced to handle the enormous torque delivered through the rear axle housing, a parachute installed to assist braking and ground clearance increased to accommodate the large turbine housing that shot flames out from under the rear bumper like a giant acetylene torch.

Forty years later the car still possesses stunning visual impact. From the front it looks every bit the mid-sixties A/FX Thunderbolt racer, with dropped suspension, dump tube headers and unpolished American Torque Thrust wheels. But the picture is only completed by approaching the thing from behind, where the black Simpson chutepack and twin large-diameter tailpipes draw the eyes down to that fearsome rocket exhaust pod.

Inside, the Galaxie’s stock instrument panel is augmented by a set of gauges to monitor engine RPM, supercharger boost and the precariously-harnessed, space-age bomb lurking out back. The Ham Radio installed beneath the dash speaks to Reynolds’ passion as a Ham operator (QSL card #W4TXL, now held by his surviving brother-in-law Bill).

This was as crazy as crazy got in 1967, and is no less so for the years that have passed. Zachary Reynolds put a total of only 3,611 miles on the car before his untimely death in a 1979 plane crash, after which it was placed in careful storage. It is accompanied by early registrations, the original owner’s manual made out to Zachary Taylor Reynolds, an illustrated Turbonique product catalog, Latham Supercharger literature and Zach’s personal notebook. Unrestored and in superb condition throughout, the “Tobacco King” is a delightfully shocking artifact that speaks to a period when daredevils and adventurers gave full sway to the forces that drove them.

The fate of prototypes and test mules is often pretty grim. After countless miles of flogging, tuning, and more flogging yet, they’re usually either banished to a dusty corner of the basement or crushed and forgotten entirely. To see a functional 43-year-old prototype is rare but to see one of this significance is truly special. The car is a 1970 Ford Torino King Cobra and it’s one of just two original test cars known to exist. The product of a stillborn racing development program, the car features one-of-a-kind aerodynamic upgrades and a hot Boss 429 backed by a Toploader 4-speed. With links to legends like Holman & Moody and Bud Moore Engineering, the King Cobra is well known among Ford royalty and documented across many printed and online publications. If you’re looking for the crown jewel for your Ford collection, this is the ultimate.To put the car into context, you have to travel back to the infamous NASCAR “Aero Wars” that took place during the 1969 and 1970 Grand National seasons. With GM on hiatus from racing, the competition between Ford and Chrysler grew to unprecedented levels. With the understanding that winning races equated to sales, both camps turned exotic experimentations in speed and aerodynamics. While Dodge fired the first shot with its Charger 500, Holman & Moody responded on Ford’s behalf with the Torino Talladega – a car that claimed the 1969 Daytona 500. By the next time the series visited Atlanta Motor Speedway, Mercury had rolled out its own version of the Talladega which they called the Cyclone Spoiler II. The new Ford designs certainly intensified the rivalry but it was the introduction of the Boss 429 that really forced the Mopar camp to step up. Their response? A mid-season knockout known as the Dodge Charger Daytona.Despite an impressive Mopar showing, David Pearson managed to lock up a second consecutive Grand National Championship, keeping Ford on top for the time being. Meanwhile, back in Dearborn, Larry Shinoda and company were busy designing an all-new aero warrior for the 1970 season. This one followed Mopar’s sloped-nose vision but applied it to the new longer, wider, and sleeker Fairlane which, in turn, became the King Cobra. Powered by a 700hp variant of the Boss 429, the car showed promise during testing and, by all accounts, was poised to be a serious threat on the track. Unfortunately, the King Cobra’s demise was already on the horizon. The car’s main supporter, former Ford president Bunkie Knudsen, was fired and replaced by Lee Iacocca who wasted no time in slashing Ford’s racing budget by 75 percent. Whatever remaining chance of survival the King Cobra had was reduced to zero by new NASCAR regulation designed to minimize the aero cars and even the overall playing field.If it weren’t for NASCAR car owner Bud Moore, there’s a good chance that neither this car nor its sibling would be around for us to admire today. The car’s design studio clays were destroyed, fiberglass mock-ups of the nose were tucked away at Holman & Moody’s shop, and the two running street prototypes (it’s rumored that there are actually three cars) were relegated to use as Dearborn “gofer” cars. Moore spotted the King Cobras in 1971 while picking up several Mustangs for the upcoming SCCA season and, being a long-time Ford racer, used his influence to strike a deal on both cars. According to the original receipt, the pair set him back a mere $1,200!. One car was parked at his shop and the other had a damaged nose. And as the story goes, he replaced it with regular Torino sheet metal and eventually sold it to a police officer. As far as we know, the car became a daily driver. After a bit of online research, we did manage to locate the Yellow Torino at Floyd Garrett’s Muscle Car Museum, located in Sevierville, TN. The car seems to be in good health and hopefully many visitors of the museum will enjoy its NASCAR roots and heritage as much as we do.They say that legends don’t die and, in the case of the blue King Cobra, that statement holds true. Some years later, Ford fanatics Steve Danielle and Dennis Roy were informed of an unusual Torino hull sitting in a South Carolina field. The car was reported to carry a ’69-style data plate stamped X0-429-0058-3 as well as prototype stickers and Boss 429 shock towers. The combination was too interesting to pass up so the pair struck a deal and brought the Torino home. Restoration proved to be doubly difficult as they had to first figure out what exactly the car was and then find the ultra-rare pieces needed to complete it. Contacts in the Ford NASCAR world confirmed the car was formerly a King Cobra while other connections guided them towards to the original nose. Once the puzzle pieces were in place, efforts focused on the body. Sanding revealed a Vermillion base coat buried underneath several layers of paint, so the car was re-shot with that high-profile hue. Though the restoration has some age on it, the paint and body still show with confidence – a true testament to the level at which the car was restored.Even in a showroom full of unique and amazing vehicles, the King Cobra stands out with ease. At least part of that can be accredited to its 17.5-ft length. Like its Mopar competitors, there is nothing small about the car. The sloped nose features two detachable panels that hide a pair of round headlights in a scooped configuration reminiscent of a Datsun 280Z. A slender chrome bumper fills the space between the nose and a lower grille section while two square turn signals and right-justified Ford lettering round out the hand-crafted front end. Despite that Datsun headlight comparison, there is no question that this bruiser is all Torino from the A-pillars back. The one unique addition to the package is the aforementioned convex rear glass found between those sloped C-pillars. Tests showed that, at high speeds, the stock concave piece caused unpredictable handling so the glass was shaped to help overall stability. Both the front and rear sport Carlite-stamped glass which reads “Prototype development tooling not to specification”.As a prototype, this car was a rolling test bed for Ford products. While the car was delivered to Bud Moore’s shop with a hot 460, that engine was neither the first nor last to be fitted into the car. By the time Danielle and Roy got to the car, that motor was long gone anyway. With the Boss 429 shock towers in place, the bay was practically begging for Shotgun power so that’s exactly what you’ll find in place today. The block carries a clean coat of blue paint and a C9AE-6015A casting number which designates it as a high performance 429. The foundation is topped with aluminum heads which frame the combination of C9AE 9425-D aluminum dual plane intake and a single Holley four barrel. Dress is provided by a blue single snorkel air cleaner assembly with a chrome lid while black Boss 429 valve covers carry the famous Holman & Moody logo. From the power steering pump and power brake assembly to the windshield wiper motor on the firewall, all the makings of a comfortable driver are present and period correct. Details like the Autolite voltage regulator, correct hoses, and an Autolite Sta-Ful battery further that authentic presentation. Turn the key and the Boss roars to life without hesitation, settling into an intimidating idle.Despite all the impressive hardware up top, the car is all Torino underneath. The floors are coated in satin black and, while there are some hardware upgrades visible, nothing strays to far from the factory work. The most notable difference is the addition of custom long tube headers that connect to a massive dual exhaust system tamed by IMCO mufflers. In the center, a “big input” Toploader four-speed transmission allows for confident shifts while a Ford 9-inch rear with a stout ‘N’ case puts power to the ground through 3.50 gears. The rear end is supported by a pair of heavy-duty leaf springs aided by staggered Monro-Matic shocks while the front maintains its standard double A-arm configuration. The front springs have been swapped out to give the front end a little more ground clearance but a pair of NASCAR-spec springs are included should you want to return the car to its former ground-pounding glory. While left turns would have been priority on the track, a factory power steering system keeps driver effort minimal regardless of which way the road curves. Braking is equally confident thanks to power-assisted front disc and rear drum brakes. At the corners, a set of Magnum 500 wheels wrapped in 235/60R15 and 255/50R15 Goodyear Eagle tires connect the vintage chassis to road while rounding out the exterior in style.These cars were originally planned as production pieces so the interior features many of the same bells and whistles as any other early ‘70s Ford. Both front and rear seating are provided by vinyl-clad bench seats which carry a highly authentic look. Black carpet conceals the floors and the lower portion of the wood grain-accented door panel while polished Ford door sill plates rest in between. There is no center console – just a Hurst T-handle shifter connected to the Toploader below. Slide in the driver seat for a closer look at the stock dash which features a horizontal speedometer, square fuel and temperature gauges, and an odometer that reads 43,235 miles. All the typical chrome pull switches are here and there’s even slider controls for the heater and AM radio. Input is fed through an unassuming three-spoke steering wheel and stainless-trimmed pedals. From the hardware to the Cobra badge on the dash, everything inside presents well but carries an aged look that simply can’t be recreated. Lift the deck lid to find a straightforward trunk space occupied by little more than a mat. There are no factory decals or full-size spare tires but there are signatures from Ford history John Craft and two former NASCAR drivers.With the kind of history this car has, there is naturally a pretty large stack of paper that goes with it. Some of the oldest pieces include the original invoice from Ford as well as vintage photos of the King Cobras in development. A copy of Motor Trend’s October 1969 issue documents the origins of the cars while an article from the October 1990 issue of Muscle Car Review catches up with all three. The aforementioned NASCAR-spec coils are included as well as two large picture boards that can be used at car shows.While Ford and Chrysler fans will both tell you their respective sides were the clear champions of the Aero Wars, the truth is probably closer to the middle. Out of 102 Grand National races held during the ’69 and ’70 seasons, aero cars claimed 73 victories overall. Of those, Ford claimed 37 while Chrysler brought home 36. – far from a landslide for either camp. Looking at this 1970 Torino King Cobra, it’s hard not to wonder what its race-prepped equivalent would have done in competition and that unspent potential is part of what makes the car so intriguing. Vehicles this exclusive don’t come up for sale often and usually find homes in long-term collections where they remain for decades to come. If you’ve dreamed of owning the ultimate Ford collectible, they simply don’t get better than this.From RK Motors.

Although DeTomaso Modena S.p.A. is an Italian car company, Alejandro DeTomaso was not Italian, he was born in Argentina. His family was very wealthy; his father was a prominent politician and his mother was a member of the Ceballos family, one of Argentina's oldest and wealthiest families, with vast land holdings originally granted to the family by the King of Spain. Alejandro's father passed away when he was only 5 years old; as a consequence he grew up on a large estate belonging to his mother's family. The logo DeTomaso chose for his automobile company was a tribute to his beloved home country of Argentina and his family heritage. The blue and white stripes of the logo's background are the colors of the national flag of Argentina. The symbol in the foreground that looks like a letter "T" is the branding symbol of the Ceballos estate where Alejandro grew up. This was the symbol branded upon the horses and cattle belonging to the estate in order to identify who owned them.

Does anyone know much about the "Bullit" wheels? I assume the ones with less backspacing like the ones in the picture are aftermarket? I am thinking about a set for my '67 Falcon I am thinking of going 17" so I can run Toyo EQ's in 275 40 17, the Toyos have a REALLY good reputation for being the best all around balanced drag radial, IE hold up reasonably well, not horrifically frightening in the wet, reasonable hook, ect. The bullits on this car really look pretty good, but they look like 18"??

Does anyone know much about the "Bullit" wheels? I assume the ones with less backspacing like the ones in the picture are aftermarket? I am thinking about a set for my '67 Falcon I am thinking of going 17" so I can run Toyo EQ's in 275 40 17, the Toyos have a REALLY good reputation for being the best all around balanced drag radial, IE hold up reasonably well, not horrifically frightening in the wet, reasonable hook, ect. The bullits on this car really look pretty good, but they look like 18"??

Does anyone know much about the "Bullit" wheels? I assume the ones with less backspacing like the ones in the picture are aftermarket? I am thinking about a set for my '67 Falcon I am thinking of going 17" so I can run Toyo EQ's in 275 40 17, the Toyos have a REALLY good reputation for being the best all around balanced drag radial, IE hold up reasonably well, not horrifically frightening in the wet, reasonable hook, ect. The bullits on this car really look pretty good, but they look like 18"??